Traditional art and sketching

Peruse our Sketching from the Imagination series, start your own sketch journal, or try your hand at clay sculpting! If you’re a complete beginner looking for a new hobby, or even an experienced artist looking for inspiration and workflow insights, our traditional art and sketching resources have plenty to offer!

3D digital art

Covering a wide variety of software and approaches, our books, magazines, and eBooks are there to offer you the support and motivation you need. Whether you want to sculpt a monster in ZBrush or create a stylized character in 3ds Max, take a look at our range to start your next project!

Arturo Garcia reveals how to turn a 2D concept drawing into an accurate and exciting 3D model of a destructive deforestation vehicle, from modeling through to rendering. Improve your hard-surface work with this step-by-step guide for 3ds Max.

In this month’s issue, we chat with Marcello Baldari about his Polysketches, Pior Oberson about his brilliant character designs, and Djordje Nagulov about his anatomical studies. Learn how to create environments with Vue and ZBrush, improve your work processes in Maya, brush up on your Polypainting skills, and much more besides.

Beginner’s Guide to Character Creation in Maya continues 3dtotal’s tradition of offering helpful guides for beginners looking to step into the world of digital art. Talented 3D Animator and Trainer, Jahirul Amin, gives an insightful breakdown of how to model from scratch using Maya and Mudbox. Not only will you learn about the principles of rigging and animation, with a step-by-step guide detailing how to link the joints and create constraints and controls for animation, you will also learn how to correctly light and render your scene for porfolio-worthy presentation. Plus, in-depth chapters on anatomy will provide you with a solid foundation on which to develop your 3D character skills, so that by the end of this book you will have created your very own realistic walk cycle.

This month’s magazine is chock full of brilliant characters and creatures from a host of talented artists. We’re designing alien monsters and fantastical godlike beings, catching up with pro character sculptor Glauco Longhi, and taking a ride through Jonathan Ball’s technicolor world of teddy bears and giant rampaging robots. Something for everybody!

Senior Environment Artist at Codemasters, Andrew Finch, reveals how to make playable levels for games using the Unreal Development Kit (UDK). Whether you are looking to create a stunning portfolio piece or just fancy trying something new, this step-by-step project guide will give you a fantastic grounding in the UDK to set you on the right foot for your future game-creation adventures!

In this month’s issue, we’re going to the movies with Ken Barthelmey (The Maze Runner) and Iker García Santander (Justin and the Knights of Valour), as they share their thoughts on the industry and experiences from the world of film. We’re also happy to be trying something new with our Spotlight feature, a versatile space for different kinds of 3D artists and their projects. This month, we’re proud to feature traditional sculptor Jonathan Payne and his extraordinary clay creations. They’re pretty unsettling – you’ve been warned!

ZBrush is a powerful program offering digital artists of all levels intuitive and inspiring workflow solutions for 3D models and 2D images. Following on from the success of other ZBrush titles such as ZBrush Character Sculpting: Volume 1, this new book focuses on the design and creation of a variety of character and creature sculpts by world-class artists including Mariano Steiner, Maarten Verhoeven, Caio César, and Kurt Papstein.

We’re kicking off this month with two wonderful interviewees, Leticia Reinaldo and Nikita Veprikov, both of whom have something to say about finding your own voice and, most important of all, having fun! We certainly hope you have fun reading this issue, where we’ve gathered a wealth of knowledge and resources to help you learn, improve, and find that creative voice we all look for.

This month we speak to Argentine animation legend Juan José Campanella ahead of his star-studded new family movie, The Unbeatables. Louie Tucci shares his pearls of industry wisdom and gives us a sneaky peek at a 3D printer in action. John A. Martini cooks an actual burger in pursuit of his art, and Cézar Brandão shares a look behind one of his beautiful portraits.

One of the many things the artists in 3dcreative have taught us is the importance of following your passions. As such, we are pleased to be featuring the work of two of our favorite character artists: Bryan Wynia and Justin Bintz. Our cover artist Bryan reflects on his exciting career history, while Justin shares the excitement of the early stages of his success.

So many of the great 3D artists we speak to tell us how important history and traditional art is to them when it comes to references and inspiration, but in this issue of 3dcreative, we will be looking at what 3D skills can bring to the world of art history! Carlos Bayod Lucini explains how he and artist Manuel Franquelo have developed the Lucida scanner which, with the help of a few 3D artists, perfectly recreates historic monuments, preserving the original for generations to come.

We are constantly amazed by the advancements in 3D printing, repeatedly blowing our excitable minds! So this month we have brought in Francis Bitonti, best known for his collaborative 3D-printed dress worn by Dita Von Teese, to talk to us about careers in 3D design and his exciting new collaborations with MakerBot and 3D Hubs. On top of this, we look at the excellent craftsmanship of our cover artist, Pablo Muñoz Gomez’s ZBrush sketchbook, as well as checking out Kurt Papstein’s speedy sculpting and much, much more.

It’s important to experiment and find your skills and passions. With this in mind, we have a varied array of tutorials to help you to refine your practice: from hard-surface modeling to texturing and sketching. You’ll also find creative advice from some of the industry’s top character designers including Kurt Papstein and our cover artist, Jeff Miller. Alongside this, discover software tips and tricks for 3ds Max, Maya, ZBrush and more! There’s plenty inside to help you refine your practice, so it’s time to get working!

Fact: Mathieu Aerni created our cover image Get out of my yard!!! in just one night! This issue, Mathieu demonstrates that incredible 3D images don’t need to take days to create. With an understanding of sculpting anatomy and materials, you can generate interesting characters in next no time at all! Add to this helpings of character inspiration from the exceptionally talented Katon Callaway, and you get an issue packed with industry insights and helpful techniques.